Template talk:Information page

Simplifying this template
i have bumped into this template a few times. It has lots of long, complicated words and is quite legalistic. I looked it up on the "The Reading Ease" website and it has a reading age of grade 11, for 16-17 year-olds... surely we should be aiming for something a little easier to read. Is there a way to simplifying what's stated here? I ask in discussion because this is used on quite a few pages so a "bold" change may not be so useful. --Tom (LT) (talk) 01:51, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

infopage vs essay
It's just been pointed out to me that the template states: "where something is inconsistent with this essay, please defer to those." An infopage is not an essay. It reflects "the community's consensus", not an editors opinion. I propose changing the wording to : "where something is inconsistent with this information page, please defer to those." LK (talk) 03:25, 23 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Per the 'silence implies agreement' rule, I'll enact the change in a couple of weeks if there are no other comments. LK (talk) 04:06, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia how to, information, and supplemental pages are types of essays as per the link you provided...see Essays. As noted on that  Essay page "essays serve as interpretations or commentary of perceived community norms for specific topics and situations". Also would not be a good idea to unlink the term essay in the template as it leads to info that describes what essays are, the types of essays and status within the community. Info pages like personal essays may be written and edited by anyone without overall community oversight.  For a listing of all that falls under essays cat....see Template messages/Wikipedia namespace  or Category:Wikipedia essays -- Moxy (talk) 11:36, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Then WP:Essays is probably wrong. WP:POLICIES does not say that all the other types of pages are "essays".  (It probably intends that they have "the same force as" essays, to the extent that they give advice rather than technical information, but "same statutory force as" is not the same thing as "actually a type of".  I've removed the sentence as both needless and misleading.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:34, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Text
I've tried to re-add text explaining what the purpose of info pages are, and their relationship to the parent pages. I think this info is important. Was reverted, but with a vague reference to a discussion I can't find, instead of an actual concern about the text. Since it doesn't look like that discussion ever actually took place, we're going to have it here and now. — swpb T 14:33, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I will search for the talk...but basically we decided not to overwhelm our readers with text of this nature on thousands of pages...on all of these types of templates.....a link works just fine. Also must remember many many info pages have noting to do with policy so the text just added is a bit off. I will find the RfC.--Moxy (talk) 15:01, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Please do, but if this RfC was about "all these types of templates" (and what scope is that?), then it does not preempt discussion about the best wording for this particular template, in the way you used it. It's clear that you oppose the language I added this template, and on that basis alone there probably won't be a consensus to restore it. But you need to own your position, instead of declaring that you have the support of an unspecified discussion that, it turns out, at best wasn't even specific to this template. That, to me, is editing in bad faith. — swpb T 15:46, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

"It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community."
I really dislike this passage for a few reasons. First, mentioning it's not a PAG, that's entirely fine, since an infopage isn't a PAG.

However, the second part I find often quite misleading about the level of consensus or vetting the page has. For example, WP:BOTDICT is an infopage, but having "as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community" is clearly nonsense. That page had significant review, and accurately documents terms of arts and current practices. But also there reason it isn't a policy or guideline has nothing to do with its 'level of vetting', simply because it's not designed to a policy or guideline in the first place.

I find this applies to a great majority of pages marked as infopages, WP:PRIMER, H:DUMMY, etc...

So I propose we change this to the following


 * This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, but rather intends to provide additional information about the concepts in the page(s) it supplements. It may reflect varying levels of consensus or vetting.

or similar. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:26, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Since no one objected, I tweaked the language. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:10, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Wish I saw this before....we had a long chat at the pump about using the word "vetted". Its was though non-comprehensible to most in a template like this.  I suggest we restore the " levels of consensus " term because as we all know most page have 0 vetting.- Plus why link to WP:CONACHIEVE   it has no info on this. - Moxy 🍁 18:17, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Most infopages have extensive vetting. Most don't have formal RFCs, but they are highly viewed, and are vetted through editing, through discussion, and so on. No objection to expanding slightly to "It may reflect varying levels of vetting and consensus." however. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:37, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Will have to disagree with most.....as most are rarely even seen with some being very detrimental. But agree let's add back the link that talks about this point.-- Moxy 🍁 20:08, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Infopages that are detrimental shouldn't be infopages. Anyway, added the second link.&#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:17, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

"noreplace" is not working in 
The code should prevent this template overriding an explicitly already-provided shortdesc, but this is not working at Portal. Anyone know why, and how to fix it? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:37, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , it looks to me like the custom description is displaying at that page, so it seems to be working. Maybe you need to refresh/clear the cache? &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 04:39, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's is, but the default one generated by the template is also showing (if you have the CSS turned on to see these things, which are normally hidden from desktop readers). I can tell it's coming from the template because it appears immediately above it, and moves with it when I change the order of the page-top templates. I would think that in the presence of the explicitly defined short desc., that the one in the template would be completely suppressed with noreplace.  I think it's still being put into the code the browser receives, apparently just with CSS to make it hidden.  That's presumably an issue with, ultimately, not . That's not a good way to go about it, if it can be avoided, since we cannot, for WP:REUSE purposes, presume that content that is present but hidden will remain so, because the system doing the reuse has characteristics we cannot firmly predict (e.g. CSS support instead of simply ripping the text out without any of its presentation-related markup).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:33, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Looking at the code of, I see that it is doing , which may be incorrect syntax. From Help:Magic words: "Note: The magic words above can also take a parameter, in order to parse values on a page other than the current page. A colon  is used to pass the parameter, rather than a pipe  that is used in templates, like  ."  Depending on what the code in the server is really doing, this   being sent to the magic word may really need to have another colon instead of the pipe, or it may do nothing at all, or it may be being misinterpreted as part of the string value passed by .  Meanwhile, changing the template to suppress  entirely in the case of  having content of   is not what we want; it should only have an effect if there is actually another short desc. provided directly in the page.  I suppose a module might be usable to do this, to examine the page for presence of  or one of its shortcuts, or the  magic word itself, and then suppress the entire short desc. of the template at hand.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:50, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The  does not suppress the magic word, nor any template calling it. It is merely a directive to the server telling it not to replace any existing value for the magic word that the server has already found when parsing the page from top to bottom. So if you disable the CSS that hides the text produced by the short description template, you will see the text anywhere it is produced, and that includes within infoboxes as well as any explicit uses. That does not mean that the   is not working, and you can check that by looking at 'Page information' (in the left-hand tools menu) and checking the 'Local description' which is where the parser stores the short description it has found for the page. We don't normally care that the template is called more than once on a page because   allows us to select the one we want for the short description, and because readers don't see multiple instances of the text. If you you don't want to see multiple instances, don't disable the CSS that hides it. Because   already works exactly as intended, there is no need to explicitly suppress second uses of the template instead.
 * The code  is correct. The magic word is separated from its parameters by a colon, but the second parameter (and any subsequent ones) is separated from the prior parameter by a pipe character. It doesn't need another colon, and that suggestion is wrong.
 * There are occasions where we need to suppress the template being produced by an infobox, notably where it also adds the page to a category. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Short descriptions for an example. For those sort of cases, I wrote a template Has short description which uses the Module:String2   to test whether the short description template is already explicitly in the wikitext. You can see it implemented in Template:Infobox school/short description/sandbox. I wouldn't recommend using it unless it is needed because of the overhead of loading the whole page into Lua memory just to check for the presence of the SD template. --RexxS (talk) 12:36, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Something seems not working right with shortdesc helper
Hi, looking at Rollback the shortdesc helper does not display the usual option to import the data from Wikidata and edit it. Also, I noticed that if you choose the "Add" option it no longer imports the data from Wikidata. I made no changes to the page because I wanted others to see this. Has there been changes/updates to the software/features or is this something specific to those types of pages? I normally see options to either import or import and edit from Wikidata, not just "Add", but I haven't done any descriptions lately since I've been working on my long overdue and neglected userpage. Thanks. Huggums537 (talk) 21:04, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Ahh, nevermind. I just clicked on the "?" for more info to find out importing was disabled, but I guess that is a new feature I wasn't aware of. Thanks anyway. I've answered my own question. Huggums537 (talk) 21:07, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I just realized I had a bunch of tabs opened, and none of this got posted to the correct talk page anyway...¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Huggums537 (talk) 12:14, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Need to remove the image. So that the text is better visible in portrait view on cell phones
Please see:
 * Template talk:Shortcut
 * Template talk:Wikipedia how-to

For example, the top of this page linked below doesn't fit in portrait view at all on my iphone SE 2020. Due to the image, and the wider shortcuts with WP: in front of them. The template extends past the right of the screen: And the text is weird. It is in a long narrow column. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:01, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Accessibility dos and don'ts


 * The display of this template (and many similar ones) should definitely be better-optimized for small screens. Since it's possible to have different displays based on screen size, though, that shouldn't need to come at the cost of degrading the current appearance on larger screens.  Sdkb  talk 14:51, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I really don't know what the problem is. We manage to wrap text around right-aligned images in articles. But for some reason we can't figure out how to do it inside Template:Information and Template:Wikipedia how-to.

I did this below fairly quickly with a simple div box. Narrow your browser window to see the text wrap around the shortcuts and the image. Or look at this section in side-by-side preview.

This is an information page. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

Just need to put the above in a simple template, and add a parameter to enter the whole shortcut box:

If you look at Template:Information page you see that it is way too complex. It is trying to do too much. It may need to be broken up into several simple templates doing simple tasks. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:54, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * This template appears to be an implementation of ombox, a standard message box template that is used all over the place. Using the template, rather than a simple div-based box, has several advantages. Do you experience similar rendering issues with other ombox-based templates? – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:36, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes. See the other talk pages linked above. See also: --Timeshifter (talk) 19:10, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 204
 * Template talk:Ombox
 * Thanks. It looks like you are seeing a problem with the fixed three-column format used by ombox. You might want to move this conversation to that template's talk page, since I don't think it is something we can or should fix here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Last time I had this discussion it went nowhere. A year ago at WP:VPT. So I don't have high hopes it will get fixed at the ombox talk page. I think a possible solution is to stop using that template here. Use another one. Or have a template editor create a new simple template for here. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:16, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The problem you're describing applies to every template that uses Ombox. We should address it at its core, not create a hacky workaround that'd apply only to this one (somewhat prominent) use case.  Sdkb  talk 20:49, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I hope it can get fixed at ombox. My gut says it can't. So if nothing happens in a few weeks, someone here needs to please take care of it, because I may not have time to do anything further with it. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * My gut says that if someone who knows how to code HTML creates a working mockup of Ombox that keeps the desktop display the same but improves the mobile display, others will probably be like "sure" (most editors don't care about mobile) and it'll get implemented.  Sdkb  talk 23:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

People need to care. Over 50 percent of website traffic is from cell phones. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:00, 9 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Absolutely. I'm just saying that, for making changes to mobile, the practical reality that they don't will smooth your path.  Sdkb  talk 19:35, 9 July 2024 (UTC)